Vodafone bets big on IT to grow enterprise services

Vodafone is betting on IT services to woo enterprise customers and introduce software-driven tools to help them tap new business business opportunities.Muntazir Abbas | ET Bureau | January 02, 2016, 08:45 IST

NEW DELHI: Vodafone India is betting on IT services to woo enterprise customers and is planning to increase its partner base and introduce software-driven tools to help them tap new business opportunities in small cities.

The nation’s second largest telecom operator offers enterprise services through Vodafone Business Solutions (VBS), which serves 7 million corporate customers in global, corporate, government and SME (small-and-medium enterprise) business verticals and contributes 15% to overall revenue.

The company is aggressively focusing on small-and-medium business segment, and aims to engage 300 channel partners and 1,000 advanced resellers by March 2016 to indirectly sell IT-driven business solutions portfolio in tier-II cities.

“Small-and-medium business is fragmented. We are managing customers’ IT needs through internal and external associates and plan to engage 300 channel partners and 1,000 advanced resellers by March 2016,” Vodafone India’s senior vice president of SME business, Ajay Sehgal, told ET.

The Indian arm of UK-based Vodafone is helping partners put together IT capabilities to match evolving customer needs with a range of ICT-enabled services that include pay-as-per-use cloud services, enterprise mobility, wireline solutions and business-centric value-added services.

Vodafone India is also working on to unveil Partner Operating System (POS) to track performance of associates and retailers as well as to fully empower them with a host of services such as monitoring and billing and plans to launch a knowledge-based portal to keep partners updated and that can be accessed over smartphone from anywhere.

“We have recently launched a Salesforce-based internal tool to get centralised real-time visibility of business from across locations and have also given access to partners and it helps to generate leads for them,” Sehgal said.

It is aggressively educating partners to enable customers to be “future-ready” with solutions that include machine-tomachine applications. Vodafone information technology portfolio includes website hosting; PC security solution Vodafone Shield, starting at monthly Rs 35 per licence; and Microsoft Office 365 at Rs 279 per month.

It is engaging with localised highperforming partners to win new SME accounts in small pockets, said Sehgal.

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